I wrote this many times in 2016, and I’ll write it again here: The fact that Sanders is from the state he’s from gives him the luxury of purity. I don’t doubt that he’s principled. But it’s also a fact that he (along with colleague Pat Leahy) faces less pressure from powerful interests than probably any other senator in the country.
Why? Because of the nature of their state. Nearly every state has either a big corporation of a large extractive industry or something. Not Vermont. Vermont has no huge banks. It’s home base to no massive corporate conglomerates. It doesn’t have a single billionaire. The biggest “company” in Vermont is the state university. And of course it’s home to all the left-leaning back-to-the-earth types who started moving there in the 1970s. When that’s your state, and it’s 95 percent white to boot, and a mere 150,000 votes will win you statewide elections, you have a lot of freedom to do and say whatever you please (although on the one issue that might cause him problems in the state, guns, we saw him trim his sails aplenty in 2016).
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